Massachusetts officials have welcomed the renovation or rebuild of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School into a key step of a competitive process that could mean significant state reimbursements.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) board voted on Wednesday to accept the school project into the feasibility stage of their process.
John K. McCarthy, executive director of the MSBA, wrote a letter to school officials saying that they were pleased to invite the Vineyard school into the program, but explained that it does not necessarily mean reimbursements will follow.
“I do want to emphasize that this invitation to partner on a Feasibility Study is not approval of a project but is strictly an invitation to the District to work with the MSBA to explore potential solutions to the problems that have been identified,” McCarthy’s letter states.
The authority could reimburse Vineyard towns nearly 40 percent of the cost of renovating and upgrading the facility, which is 64 years old.
The next part of the process will include finding an owner’s project manager and designer, which could take several months. That’s even before a designer starts laying out conceptual plans.
Still, staff and administrators at the high school are excited and thankful that the project was accepted into this stage of the MSBA process.
“It’s just a step but a significant step,” superintendent Richie Smith told The Times.
Smith was thankful to the leaders of all six towns, the voters of the Vineyard, the MVRHS school committee and the school administration. “It was truly a unified effort,” he said.
To get this far into the MSBA process required approval on two articles at all six town meetings. The first was to support a $2 million feasibility study, and the other amended the school’s regional agreement in order to fund the project. All six town meetings passed the requests overwhelmingly.
Smith said that that was a testament to the hard work that has gone on mostly behind the scenes.
”I’m really proud of the work we’ve done,” he said.
